The fortress looms before us. We didn’t die. A boy at the entrance soaks his voice into a walkie. A man with one leg wheels over our feet as we are going in.

I can’t believe this place is still so white trash… which, of course, means that I can’t believe that I’m still white trash, even after all of the poetry I’ve written. I’m a white cis male, conservative and cucked. Jesus has abandoned me. I’m not walking in my body. My soul is in her stomach. She, the one, the monster who ate me. Please let my body off into the sunset. Why can’t it just sink into the desert?

Her family is such cheapskates, especially her mom.

I didn’t get enough sleep for this… They’re throwing argument against the 1.96 “baby on board” suction cup sign that I just threw into the cart, thinking that I’d said 2.96 and that they could get it cheaper on Amazon.

The baby had been kicking all night. Musette had been rubbing it out of our therapy dog.

I’m standing here in the middle of the aisles trying to figure out how to think, speak, and behave like the dog.

In the bathroom, the urinals have little walls between them. Please don’t come in, I think to my father in law. I just want to be alone. This is not a day off for me. It is torture. I just want to go home. Since having sex with his daughter in the basement, I am now stuck with this guy. He must have known that this would happen. He’s wanted a grandchild so bad. This has all been one long con. A trap. He was willing to make the sacrifice. When you boil it down there’s no other way. I’ll learn soon enough, but I don’t have to talk with him, no matter how much the karma’s going to hurt later or how slowly and deliberately he approaches, encroaching into my peripheral. I’ve got to ask myself how it’s possible that he really doesn’t have any idea who I am? The kind of writing that I’m doing? Impossible. He wouldn’t give me the time of day. It could have been my way out. They always say the truth will set you free. I could have just shined the light, and kept my monsters at bay. Now they are inside of me. I am stretched out into another person. All the good my masturbation did. I just had to go and pray for a soul mate…